Tagged With os x

There is not shortage of free mobile and desktop applications available on the internet. Unfortunately, most of them are either rubbish or trick you into parting with your cash via in-app purchases. But if you take the time to sort the wheat from the chaff, you'll find plenty of excellent apps that truly are free.

We're thankful every day for all the free apps out there that improve our lives (and the developers that make them!). Here are 50 our favourites.

Where does all the time go? When it comes to the time you spend on your phone, your computer, and the web, this doesn't have to be a vague and rhetorical question - plenty of tools out there will track and monitor your time automatically, telling you exactly which apps and sites are sucking up most of your precious minutes of existence.

Predicting the future is near impossible -- but that doesn‘t stop us all from having a red hot go. Human beings have been predicting the future since the beginning of history and the results range from the hilarious to the downright uncanny.

One thing all future predictions have in common: they‘re rooted in our current understanding of how the world works. It‘s difficult to escape that mindset. We have no idea how technology will evolve, so our ideas are connected to the technology of today.

macOS: Once Apple finally embraced the right-click, Mac apps loaded up the right-click menu with extra functions. MacOS even includes several by default. But most English-speaking users don't need to "Convert Text to Simplified Chinese". Here's how to get rid of that and any other right-click menu option, so you can easily find the ones you do want.

Though weather forecasting is a notoriously inexact science, thanks to voice assistants, pop-up notifications and buzzing smartwatches, it's easier than ever to keep tabs on the day's weather (and dress accordingly). Of course, checking the truncated weather forecast on your phone might be convenient, but it could also mean you're losing out on valuable information that could help you deal with the heat, rain, or general mugginess outside. That's where desktop weather apps come in.

Mac: Flexibits, creators of Lifehacker's favourite calendar app Fantastical, has released its command-line approach to contacts with Cardhop. This new contacts app is oriented around actions rather than your contacts database; you mainly use it by writing commands, kind of like talking to Siri. It's a potentially compelling interface -- if you can remember to use it.

The MacBook Pro's Touchbar is a polarising addition to the notebook. Many praised its versatility, while others bemoaned the removal of the traditional shortcut keys we've grown to know and love on Apple's keyboards. Since there's no tactile indication of whether or not you've hit a key on the Touchbar, it's a bit frustrating to find yourself tapping where you think the misaligned Escape key should be without getting a response.

When you're listening to music through cheap headphones or speakers, an equaliser will help even out the sound. Most equalizers come with genre presets, but you can manually adjust them too. It helps to know what kind of instrument is affected by each frequency.

Hackers are using Apple's "Find My" service to remotely hold devices for ransom, reports MacRumors. Multiple people have tweeted about stolen accounts in the past week. Two-factor authentication does not prevent the hack.

Bluetooth technology can be a godsend for those of us trying to minimise the amount of cord clutter in our digital lives. But when your laptop, phone, or other device is hooked up via bluetooth to a wireless speaker or pair of headphones and the audio playback starts to stutter, it can be nothing short of infuriating.

Apple's latest MacBook Pro refresh has its fair share of detractors and for good reason -- changes like the omission of traditional USB ports, incompatibility with Apple's own Lightning-only headphones, and the removal of the magnetic MagSafe connector have rankled longtime users, despite Apple executive Phil Schiller insisting the changes unveiled were "the future of the notebook."

When you're sharing your screen for a business or school presentation, you don't want any notifications popping up, like a sext, a calendar notification for your therapist appointment, or a Slack DM about the problem client you're currently presenting to. You could hit "Do Not Disturb", but what if you forget? While Windows 10 has a built-in option to turn notifications off during screen-shares, OS X doesn't. The free app Muzzle fixes that.

Reader Saifali has submitted desktops in the past to our Desktop Showcase, but this one's a fresh look, and we like it. If you dig it too -- or just the Antarctic landscape in it -- here's how you can bring the same look to your computer.

What do you do when you have three beautiful curved ultrawide displays? Mount them side-by-side for a glorious, pixel-packed super-wide experience, like elliotvs did with his workspace. Here's a closer look.

Since last spring, new MacBook Pro models have replaced the function keys with the Touch Bar, a gimmicky touch-sensitive display along the top of the keyboard. It takes some getting used to, and you may find yourself groping for the delete key and cranking up your headphone volume, or idly resting your finger on the escape key and losing your work.

The login screen greets you every single time you boot up your computer, but it's often neglected when it comes to tweaking and customising your system. Here's how to make changes to the login screen on macOS Sierra or Windows 10 so it's very much your own.

Your Mac is running a little slow these days. It takes forever to boot up. You have to delete something just to download that file attachment from Carla in accounting. Any time you stream a video it seems to lock up for a few seconds. Let's fix all that.

Whether you're showing off your video gaming prowess, trying to fix a problem, or capturing a badly-spelled tweet before it's deleted from the web, screenshots are an essential part of our digital lives. It's not always obvious just how to pull off a screengrab though, especially when they're blocked by default. Here's how to take a screenshot anywhere -- even when they're blocked.